New Delhi, India / Singapore – July 20, 2016: The Indian sub-continent has millions of sports enthusiasts. According to FIFA.com, there are more than 20 million football players across India. Passion for sports, and in particular football, binds these fans and players tightly and draws them back many times a day to their online and offline communities, either for content around their favorite teams and players or to seek answers related to the sport they play.
Khel Now - an exciting, interactive and comprehensive new social platform has been launched, bringing sports-related content and social networking together to build communities in different parts of the world and connect all sports stakeholders - from fans to teams to coaches to sporting brands and businesses.
The uniqueness of Khel Now is that it is the only platform that ties together crowd-sourced and curated content, information, networking, reviews/ratings and more, all of which is relevant, timely and location-specific to users.
Starting with India and football, Khel Now hopes to connect millions of passionate followers of the sport and will soon venture into other sports such as Tennis and Basketball. It is currently available on the Google Play Store and will soon be available on other mobile platforms.
An exciting sports social platform
Khel Now is the brainchild of Dhruv Ratra and his Silicon Valley entrepreneur colleagues who have come together to create this exciting new sports social platform. Dhruv, a graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has been extensively involved in football across India as well as in Europe, the US and elsewhere, and brings his passion and knowledge of the game to Khel Now. His colleagues bring state-of-the-art technological skills as well as network building experience.
Said Dhruv Ratra, Co-Founder and CEO, Agnificent Platform Technologies, “Having been involved in various sporting ventures around the world, we noticed an opportunity that Khel Now addresses - one that allows for greater participation and involvement of sports fans in a more structured and social mobile environment. Khel Now allows all users to benefit from community knowledge that is collected, rated and shared amongst one another whether it is a parent or a child who wants to find the best academy or coach, or whether it is a brand or business that wishes to better target sports fans in their neighbourhood with relevant and timely offers.”
Khel Now provides state-of-the-art location-based content filtering using tight integration with Google Maps which allows sports fans to search for and filter results based upon the location of their mobile device or their preferred location. Using the Khel Now app, people can:
- Follow and support their favourite sports, competitions, teams, players, communities, coaches, academies, etc. through online and offline activities
- Share high quality and relevant content such as photos, videos, reviews/ratings, Q&A, stats, profiles, information, etc.
- Locate others, locally and beyond, to meet and interact with so as to enhance combined experiences
- Provide leads and customer insights to businesses so as to best match interests and needs of fans and others
- Use online relationships and location/mobile technologies to build and nurture offline communities
Commenting on the launch of Khel Now, Dr. Shaji Prabhakaran, who is a well-known figure in Indian sports industry and associated with FIFA as Regional Development Officer said, “I have always felt that there was a huge untapped potential to draw fans to the sport in places such as South and South East Asia not only in countries with large populations such as India and Indonesia but also across countries such as Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Thailand. Khel Now is a very comprehensive and powerful Platform that allows the passionate football fan to create pages for local teams, players, places, businesses, etc. all in one place as well as rate, review, share and provide valuable feedback for others fans to read and consume. This helps build bridges between fans and communities locally as well as all over the world.”
